Eps 97 -  Is Using AI in Your Work Considered Plagiarism? Erin Weighs In Transcript

Erin Austin: Hey, so recently I was invited to weigh in on a pretty interesting LinkedIn post. It was regarding AI, of course, and the poster asked, is plagiarizing AI, Plagiarism. So in other words, if you use AI, but don't give credit to AI, is that plagiarism and the poster used an AI generated response as the jumping off point for this discussion that AI generated response reads as follows.

Using artificial intelligence to write essays and articles is considered plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined as representing someone else's work as your own without giving proper credit. So in the opinion of the poster, the answer is yes. In my opinion, the answer is no, and I will give you my reasoning behind that at the end of this episode.

But as you know, I'm all about copyright infringement, copyright protection and preventing copyright infringement and less so about plagiarism, but I do have some thoughts about that. But it is I did think this was a great time to have a conversation about the differences between copyright infringement.

And plagiarism because people often confuse the two. And in fact, I think that was why I was invited into a conversation about plagiarism, which is not something I typically address. So while copyright infringement and plagiarism do have some overlap, they are separate, uh, legal And ethical, they present separate legal and ethical considerations and implications.

So let's first talk about copyright infringement. So U. S. copyright law grants the creator, the human creator of an original work, exclusive rights to use and distribute its creation. So the rights that you have exclusive right to under copyright law, the right to reproduce, the right to distribute the work, to perform it.

to publicly display it, to create derivative works from it, and you have exclusive right to grant others the right to do any of those things with it. So if somebody wants to do those things, they can only get that permission from you as a copyright owner. So copyright infringement occurs whenever someone does one of those exclusive things that are exclusive rights to you without your permission.

We have copyright infringement and it is a legal violation and it can result in civil as well as criminal penalties. Some examples of copyright infringement, you know, reproducing some or all of a book without permission of the author, uh, posting a copy of a movie to YouTube, which, um, happens without authorization.

Uh, you know, I recently, I mean, YouTube's been around, but I didn't, I didn't know what the big deal was. And I recently discovered what the big deal is. And now I'm a huge fan. And, uh, and I will say that what has gotten my attention are these YouTube, I guess, are they called commentators, I guess, where they, uh, take clips from, you know, It's always reality television, what comes to my attention reality television, they do this commentary over, um, over what was being said.

And there was 1 in particular, um, it was like a pop psychologist. And so he was taking these clips from this, um, reality television shows, and then. You know, kind of putting his pop psych spin on it and apparently he got in some trouble about it because, uh, I think his site was demonic. His channel was demonetized.

And so now he has to, like, do these really funky things with the images so that he's not, um, uh, committing copyright infringement when he kind of does like. Half the screen or something, or in order to not, um, infringe copyrights. But yeah, you can't use even clips from TV shows without permission, um, in danger of copyright infringement.

Uh, the other example is using a photograph, uh, on your website without permission. You do need to have a license for that. Even if you found it online, uh, it requires the consent of the copyright owner to use that photograph. And uh, Music, you know, integrating music into a presentation, into a video on, you know, the introduction of the podcast.

We, I have a license for the music, uh, for the intro and outro music. Cause that is someone's, uh, copyrightable work, copyrighted work, and I need consent to use it. So, on the other hand. Plagiarism is the act of using someone else's work or ideas without proper attribution and presenting those that work or those ideas as your own.

Plagiarism is considered an ethical violation, unlike copyright infringement, which is a legal violation. However, it is not without consequences. Um, Probably all of us first became aware plagiarism in school when we were told that we have to give proper attribution to our sources. They remember those. I mean, it's been a long time for me, but when we did those reports, we had to make sure we, uh, gave credit to where we, we got materials.

And, uh, if we took something, I don't know if I should even say this, but, you know, out of an encyclopedia. And, uh, you know, giving credit to where it came from. Um, and so, uh, so even if it wasn't a, uh, you know, I wasn't going to get in trouble if I, you know, stole something out of the encyclopedia without giving credit to it, but that would be plagiarism and that would have academic consequences.

Right? And so it also now in our professional lives, it can have professional as well as reputational consequences. If we are stealing other people's ideas and passing them off as our own. And so it, of course, you know, as we're developing our reputations, developing our brands, our voices, our thought leadership, um, we do not want to be in the plagiarism business.

Even if we do not end up with, um, statutory damages as a result. Uh, you can absolutely have major reputational and professional consequences. To committing plagiarism, some examples of plagiarism, copying and pasting texts from a source without proper citation. The one that we know of from school, paraphrasing somebody else's ideas without giving credit.

That's probably going to be more applicable to what we're doing in these days as we're developing our thought leadership. Submitting someone else's work as our own, um, that might even fall into the crossover there and then failing to acknowledge collaborators or co authors. I do want to drill into this 1 because, you know, I have done a number of presentations about what the, the copyright.

Uh, issues are surrounding collaborations and co authorship. So why does failing to acknowledge a co author fall under plagiarism, but not under copyright infringement? Well, recall that a co author, each co author, I'm just going to use, let's say there's 2 co authors. Each co author owns 100 percent of the copyright in that co authored work, and it's not just, you know, 100 percent plus 100 percent equals 200%.

It's just each co author has 100 percent of the rights in that work, so it can do all of those things that I mentioned above, perform, display, create derivatives, give other people's rights to do it. They can do each of them separately without the copyright. The consent of the other, that's why it's 100 percent because they don't need to get consent from the other person.

And so what I could do is I have a coauthor of a work. I can publish it because I have exclusive, I have not exclusive rights. I have a hundred percent rights to do it without permission from my coauthor and not give credit. To my co author. So is that a copyright infringement? No, because I have the rights to do that.

But is that plagiarism? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, because I am not giving my co author credit for her contribution to that co authored work. So the main differences just in a nutshell, you know, copyright infringement. Is a violation of legal rights granted by copyright law or as plagiarism is a breach of the ethical standards that we would expect an academic professional, um, and our reputational, um, spheres, you know, related to honesty and integrity.

Um, even if no law is broken, uh, there's different kind of bodies that deal with this. If it is a copyright infringement, of course, we have access to the court system and other legal remedies, um, assuming it's registered, um, and, uh, well, Courts for if it's registered, there are other legal remedies, even if it isn't registered.

Um, and, uh, whereas our plagiarism, that's going to be handled one by the court of public opinion. Uh, if people find out that you steal people's ideas and also there can be real significant Uh, consequences in the academic setting, certainly maybe suspension expulsion, you know, failing a class, um, in the professional realm, you know, people distrust you, they wonder, you know, they don't want to work with you.

Um, maybe you lose a job because you represented yourself as being the author of something that you weren't or that you, um, you know, bringing some ideas to an engagement that aren't your own. And just general reputational harm that can come from that. And then the protections that are available to us are different.

Um, you know, we register our copyrights, um, in order to make sure that we are protecting. are expressions. Um, copyright does not protect ideas, but it protects the expression of the idea, what we wrote, what we recorded, what we painted. Um, but, um, plagiarism does protect our ideas as well. So where is the intersection?

So the intersection comes when We steal someone's expression. So we literally take some of those rights. Um, you know, someone write something and we lift it up and we put our name on it and we distribute it as our own. That is both a copyright infringement. And a, um, and plagiarism and by the way, you can have copyright infringement without plagiarism, just to be clear, like, if you take somebody else's work, you give them full credit for and people do get confused by that.

Like, I'm giving them credit, but they still must give you permission. To distribute it. So the fact that you gave me credit does not make it a, a, uh, not does not, um, negate the copyright infringement if I have not given you permission to distribute it regardless of the credit that you may give to me. So that would be plagiarism.

Um, uh. Uh, you know, plagiarism without copyright infringement without plagiarism when I give credit, but I don't have permission. And then I can also have a plagiarism without a copyright infringement when I take someone's ideas, because ideas are not eligible for copyright infringement. Protection or even if we were to take something in the public domain and because there are some things that might be in the public domain, um, like something that's very old.

Like, I could take an unpublished work of Shakespeare. I don't know what, you know, and say, like, look what I did. Um, you know, it's not protected by copyright law anymore, but that would obviously be plagiarism if I slap my name on there. And so, you know, the tried and true best practices to make sure we neither infringe nor plagiarize, uh, always get permission to use content that you do not own.

If you're taking the content, assume it belongs, someone, it is copyrighted. If it's intangible form, you're finding it in writing, you're finding on the internet, it's intangible form. And unless you know that it is in the public domain, because you know, it is AI generated, or, you know, Um, that it is, you know, 1 of public domain.

I talk about that a lot too. Um, then you want to make sure you get permission to use it. Get use proper attribution, uh, if you're talking about, you know, purple cows, I'm going to assume that was originally Seth go inside and I could be wrong about that. Um, make sure you're giving attribution to where you're getting the ideas about about blue oceans or things like that.

Um, cite your sources. Um, we, I'm sure everyone here has had plenty of experience, um, writing research papers, using third party sources and make sure you're studying your sources and, uh, and sometimes it happens, uh, accidentally, certainly if we are using AI materials, um, we want to make sure that, uh, we are They haven't kicked out something that could be might show up on a plagiarism checker as being plagiarism and I'm going to talk about why I don't think it's plagiarism still, but it's a different.

It's still, still. It will damage your reputation if you are using ideas that aren't your own. All right. So, so let's get to my hot take about why I think AI isn't plagiarism, despite what I just said, because there is kind of the loose notion of not plagiarism. Taking other people's ideas as your own, and I don't endorse it.

I think it's a bad idea. I don't want you to do it. But I think as an ethical issue that plagiarism has 2 purposes. The 1st purpose. Is to make sure that the originator of the idea gets proper credit for it. It is the product of their own intellect, their own expertise, their own deep thinking, their own thought leadership.

That is side 1 side 1 of the. Two coins, two sided coins of plagiarism is making sure that the originator of the idea is properly credited for the product of their intellect. The other side is to make sure that the plagiarist, I think that's a word, the person who commits plagiarism. Doesn't get credit for that idea.

It should not be part of their body of work. It should not be included in a thought leadership because that's not their idea. And by the way, I'm not talking about copyright infringement here at all. I am talking about ideas and said that they're not getting credit for someone else's ideas. It's not the product of their deep thinking product of their expertise.

They've taken it from somebody else. And so those are the two sides to me of the ethical considerations where we're thinking about, you know, really condemning someone in the professional setting for plagiarism. And so for the first side, The originator getting credit for their ideas for the use of their intellect, that simply doesn't apply to AI.

When AI is the creator of the content, then I, there is no ethical obligation to make sure that AI gets credit for its ideas for, because it, does it. Even have any ideas, right? Or is it just, um, kind of, uh, is it just an algorithm of some sort, some whatever the magic is that happens inside of, uh, ai. Um, so does it get the respect that we want to, um, to, to reserve for.

The true creators of ideas is a, I get that kind of respect that plagiarism is intended to prevent and my answer to that is no, that it is not intended to do that on the other side of the plagiarism coin is to make sure that the. Person who plagiarizes doesn't get to include those ideas in their own body of work as their own thought leadership.

And personally, what is coming out of AI, AI generated content, nothing that's got, I've seen this come out of AI is even close to being worthy of being some big idea that is worthy of being included. Being, uh, in someone's, uh, you know, body of work, I mean, most of what's coming out of AI, that's, you know, maybe they're, you know, writing a blog post or, you know, doing an outline or making some social media posts.

I'm not saying that it can't be more sophisticated, the more that you work with it, but. Uh, generally what is being generated by AI is a regurgitation of, you know, a mis, a mishmash of ideas that are already out there, that they're just kind of coming together to try to spit something out. It's been my experience and that is literally it's function, is to take the ideas that are already out there and, um.

And, you know, create something serviceable, uh, you know, that's assuming it's not hallucinating. I mean, I guess we could call hallucinations, you know, hallucinations original, but typically that means it's just, you know, uh, flawed or inaccurate. So, so in my opinion, neither. Purpose of, you know, why we are so, you know, the ethical consequences of plagiarism are so, you know, real and severe.

Neither of those purposes are met when we're talking about AI generated content. We're not trying to protect the originator of the ideas, which is AI. That's not. To me why we have ethical condemnation of plagiarism. And there's also, uh, if you are using AI as part of your thought leadership, that's some pretty poor thought leadership.

And so, um, we're now also not benefiting from stealing somebody else's big ideas when the big ideas came from AI. So them's me thoughts. Let me know what you think. And, uh, join me again. Remember IP is fuel. Thanks guys.